Gates of Gold

The Palace

The coach that carries Cécile toward Versailles is carved with dolphins and cherubs and lined in blue velvet. Yet it jolts and jostles her from her cushioned seat again and again, as rough as any hay wagon. When Madame asks how her feet are this morning, Cécile lies that they feel much better. Madame will not accept it. She reminds Cécile that with her, the truth is required no matter what, and asks again. Cécile admits that her feet are swollen and that her lovely new shoes pinch. Madame tells her to pull them off and put her feet up. With such a long ride ahead, no one but Françoise and Madame will ever know.

By midmorning, storm clouds gather behind the procession like a pack of wolves. Lightning splits the sky, and thunder rattles the glass. Wind howls hard enough to nearly lift the coach off the road. Cécile asks whether the driver might stop to find shelter. Madame, hands folded calmly in her lap, doubts it. Once the king decides to be back in time for his council meeting, nothing changes his mind. When Cécile asks, white-knuckled, whether they might tip over, Madame only smiles. She mentions that yesterday’s tumble made her twenty-fifth spill in a lifetime of hunting, and here she still is. Cécile envies her calm. The team of eight horses gallops harder, the coach swaying and tilting under sheets of driving rain. Madame calls for her to hang on, gripping the velvet wall handles, as the driver doubles their speed.

Then the whole procession lurches to a stop. Screams carry back from somewhere near the front. The driver, spattered with mud, opens the door to report that a coach ahead has trampled two children playing in the road. Madame sends him back for a fuller account. He returns to say the children had been unwatched in the mud. But the king is already sending coins to the grieving families. “Merci,” Madame murmurs, and the door closes again against the rain. Through the glass Cécile glimpses the parents shielding their eyes over their children’s small, still bodies. The image follows her the rest of the way. She wonders whether those parents had been too busy laboring in the fields to watch their children more closely. They pay the very taxes that gild the king’s carriages. She wonders, too, whether a purse of coins is truly worth what their lives were.

Within the hour, the storm passes. Sun returns, and steam rises off the drenched fields and vineyards as manicured trees, shops, and buildings begin to appear. In a village along the way, a bony woman with a child clinging to her skirts shakes her fist. She shrieks that she has no bread. Françoise only shakes her head, and Madame murmurs that hunger drives people to madness, everywhere, always. Cécile can’t help thinking that the jeweled gold brooch pinned to Madame’s dress alone could buy loaves enough for the whole village.

The coach soon slows before a huge, semicircular courtyard. Glistening, saddled horses and soldiers in blue and gold stand in formation there, and Cécile asks if this is the palace. Françoise laughs. It is only the stables, one of two such buildings. She says, pointing, that the true palace still lies ahead. When it comes into view, it dwarfs any cathedral Cécile has ever seen: an expanse of cobblestone climbing to golden gates. Beyond the gates, sunlight glints off windows beyond counting, the stone buildings rising toward the clouds like a small heavenly city. Trumpets sound, soldiers begin marching ahead of the royal caravan, and the coach lurches forward. Madame remarks that the king always returns amid celebration. She says that, like the sun itself, the rhythm of court runs by when he rises and when he retires.

Music unlike anything Cécile has heard fills the courtyard as the procession rolls through the golden gates. She climbs out of the coach well after Madame and Françoise. They are carried ahead of her in an enclosed sedan chair borne by four footmen. Once outside, she finds dozens of musicians playing stringed instruments amid a swelling crowd. Wedged at Françoise’s side among what soon feels like thousands of people, Cécile worries about being crushed. Françoise explains that nearly 10,000 people live and work within the palace. Earning a place at court is the goal of nobles, foreigners, and merchants alike. She adds that the king can watch the courtyard from his own apartments. After attempts on his life as a boy, he moved the court from Paris. He wanted to keep his tongue-wagging courtiers within sight.

The royal family, Madame de Maintenon, and the king himself step from their carriages and cross the courtyard. They vanish through a door at the palace’s center, and the crowd is left waiting and whispering. Despite the warm day, Cécile trembles and cannot stop. At last a set of balcony doors opens above, and the king steps forward. The crowd erupts, shouting for the king to live long. Pressed close among low-cut gowns, lacy cuffs, gold-trimmed frocks, and hats trimmed with bows and feathers, Cécile can see every gleaming detail. Her head aches from the deafening cheers. Yet through all the splendor and noise, what she still sees most clearly is the bread-starved woman’s raised fist. She also sees the two small, still bodies left behind on the muddy road.